First read this:
Questioner: But the fact is, isn’t it, that Reagan does get to the Wallace voter and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps…?
Atwater: You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger.’ By 1968 you can’t say ‘nigger’ – that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.
Then, see this cartoon….
A Blog Around The Clock 
A friend of mine has another (un)reason, “Obama will just get assassinated and ignite a race war”. I have heard that more than once in a state (Oregon) that is supposedly very blue of course not the east side so much.
You have a hard time understanding people with viewpoints different from your own, don’t you Coturnix? It’s easier just to call them racists and feel smug and self-satisfied. I’m an Obama supporter but I like to read people coming from different ideological perspectives. Guess what? A lot of them have very valid reasons for voting for McCain that have nothing to do with race. Try reading people like Ross Douthat, Rod Dreher, or the guys at The American Scene. Your political commentary (if you must keep it going) will improve greatly.
You need to study up on cognitive psychology of political behavior. Ross Douhat and Co. are just better with words, thus better at hiding their core motivations. It is sad, but true, that for most people in the street, the cartoon is dead on. And Lee Atwater himself explains how that got to be. Karl Rove is his direct political descendant. They know who they are dealing with, know how to campaign utilizing that knowledge, and thus know how to win. It is to our peril to ignore the pervasiveness of racism (and sexism) and how it underlies, usually subconsciously, everything many Republican voters do, just because we don’t like it. Over the past decades of Atwater et al. work, the racists have moved to GOP. Over the last few years, the non-racists have left GOP. What is left is a higher concentration of racism in the GOP today than ever in the past 50 years. We have to realize this and deal with this effectively, not put out heads in the sand and squeal “Racism? In America? No way? You gotta be kidding? Or is this reverese racism?”
So Democrats are motivated by only the noblest of purposes but Republicans are only motivated by bigotry? I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you don’t think so simplistically but it sure comes off that way.
No, but this is a blog post, a quick link, an idea thrown out for discussion, not a dissertation.
I would say that the concentration of racists and intensity of racist feeling, as well as unwillingness to “confront and work on my own racist feelings” is somewhat higher in GOP than Dems, and getting more and more so over time (due to immigration of racists and emigration of non-racists from the GOP). Enough to be used for electoral victory for the GOP by the use of dogwhistles.
A lot of them have very valid reasons for voting for McCain that have nothing to do with race.
I dunno about “valid” but sure, many have nonracist reasons. and some have racist reasons. What are you missing about this? Your inability to admit and acknowledge this is just as bad as anything Coturnix might do to err on the side of over-generalization.
The question is, if you are not a racist and you are a Republican, what do you do? Do you encourage, accept and happily count up your racist votes because they go your way? Or do you vigorously and genuinely dissociate yourself from the racist vote at any cost?
If the former, are you really any better than the racists themselves?
R. Totale, if you are really upset that the GOP has used the “Southern Strategy” since Nixon, that this started because southern Democratic legislators were mad when the Democrats passed the Civil Rights Act, and that the tactics have been used as described by Lee Atwater, who was one of the GOP bigwigs who rode it hardest, then all you need to do is get in your time machine, head on back to the 1960s, and prevent them from doing it. But it’s reality, whether you like it or not.
started because southern Democratic legislators were mad when the Democrats passed the Civil Rights Act,
BTW, because some people (not you, R. Totale, of course) who might not realise that these southern Democratic legislators mostly then switched to the GOP (Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms are examples) I’ve mentioned that here.
started because southern Democratic legislators were mad when the Democrats passed the Civil Rights Act,
BTW, because some people (not you, R. Totale, of course) who might not realise that these southern Democratic legislators mostly then switched to the GOP (Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms are examples) I’ve mentioned that here.
Alfred Regnery, the son of the guy who started the right-wing Regnery publishing, recently wrote a memoir/history of the “conservative movement,” and does discuss how the conservatives went for the Wallace voter. The most memorable phrase in the book, indeed, was that the conservative movement appealed to those who were “uncomfortable with civil rights.”
Bora, you just specifically called Ross Douthat a racist who uses words to conceal his core motivation. Unless you have some specific quotes to back that up, I think you owe him an apology. I don’t care if it was a quick blog post, rather than a dissertation. That is no excuse to slander an individual by name.
Also, I recall that you supported Edwards in the primary. Were you a racist at that time?
I have no idea who the guy is. You trotted a name as a symbol. I used his name (actually not really his name, but a monicker “Douhat et al”) back as a symbol (for an eloquent rightwing idiot). It is called a rhetorical trick, what you used, and I served it right back at you. This has nothing to do with a person – his name was just temporarily used, as a string of letters, for a symbolical use.
Update. Holy shit! I just googled the guy – he cites, APPROVINGLY!!! – Charles Murray and John Derbyshire!!! If that is not an indication the guy is a rotten racist, I don’t know what is. He needs to apologize to the humanity for ever having put a pen to paper with his slime.!
Qrzyqat,
*bzzzt* wrong! All but two of the Dixiecrats remained Democrats and maintained their seniority within the Dem party until as late as the ’80’s. The Dems who voted against the Civil Rights Act (and remember – as a percentage, fewers Dems voted for it than did Repibs) also stayed in the Dem paty and remained chairmen, etc.. As I have pointed out time and again, if the Southern Strategy was actually about race (despite the fact that the well-publicized book that designed it talked almost exclusively about economics, like Clinton), then why is state politics in the South *still* primarily Democratic Party, hmmmm? While the South does occasionally vote Republican for president until very recently the South was almost exclusively Democratic Party at the county and state level – and it is still majority Dem at those levels. If this is about Race, explain why so many prominent Dems ‘came up’ through state machines in the South.
Also, if racism is a right-wing thing, then why is it that I can lay hands on lefty bloggers painting people in blackface or using racial taunts? Why is it that there are readily-found reports of leftists calling Black Repubs racial epithets?
if racism is a right-wing thing, then why is it that I can lay hands on lefty bloggers painting people in blackface or using racial taunts? Why is it that there are readily-found reports of leftists calling Black Repubs racial epithets?
Because nobody’s saying that racism is exclusively a right-wing thing, but for every left-winger you can find who’s overtly racist, you can find ten right-wingers who are, or did you miss those buttons that were being sold by the Republicans, or that “bake sale” held by the College Republicans, or the “Obama waffle” thing?
Coturnix, I’m really glad I don’t get to vote in your elections this time around. I find Obama off-putting because he sounds like a televangelist when he speaks, which perception is strictly cultural and has nothing to do with the colour of his skin; that kind of thing doesn’t fly in Canada… I’d really have to hold my nose to vote for the guy.
Fortunately, I get to vote for Glen Pearson (the Liberal candidate in my riding) instead. 🙂
Interrobang: Wow! What televangelists are you listening to?